Sony has introduced the Alpha 9, a new 4K mirrorless camera, and a FE 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM lens.

The Sony Alpha 9 (a9) is a new digital 35mm full-frame camera from Sony, boasting a 24.2MP CMOS sensor. The mirrorless camera offers 4K (3840 x 2160p) video recording across its full sensor.

Approximately 25% faster performance when compared with the α7R II.

The camera uses full pixel readout without any pixel binning to snag 6K of information. This means that Sony is oversampling to produce its 4K footage to provide more detail and depth to the image. You can also record in the popular Super 35mm size, and, as you might expect, the a9 can record full HD at 120 fps at up to 100 Mbps.

The 24.2 MP full-frame CMOS sensor is back-illuminated, allowing it to capture maximum light. Its ISO range is 100 – 51200, expandable to 50 – 204800, while its enhanced BIONZ X processor plays a large part in image quality to minimize noise in the higher sensitivity range. What's more impressive, the a9 now supports uncompressed 14-bit RAW, so we can now get the most out of its wide dynamic range.

The a9 also boasts 693 AF points, covering 93% of the frame to maximize focusing capabilities. According to Sony, the Fast Hybrid AF system achieves approximately 25% faster performance when compared with the α7R II.

Sony has doubled its battery life.

On the stills side, the a9 offers blackout-free continuous shooting up to 20 fps for 362 JPEG or 241 RAW images. It has a 1/32,000 maximum shutter speed and it's capable of 60 AF/AE tracking calculations per second.

A new Quad-VGA OLED Tru-Finder adds 3,686k dots for accurate true-to-life detail reproduction and features a double-sided aspherical element, allowing it to achieve 0.78x magnification and superb sharpness. The EVF is also coated with ZEISS T coating to reduce reflections and a fluorine coating helps repel dirt. The frame rate of the Tru-Finder can be customized with options for 60 fps or 120 fps.

With all this added power, the a9 has a 5-axis in-body image stabilization and dual UHS-II SD card slots where data can be recorded simultaneously. Sony has even doubled its battery life with the Z battery, which has 2.2x more capacity than the A7R II.

There's not even a picture profile so not even s-log. I think this camera was made strickly for sports photographer or wild life, to compete with Nikon and Canon flag ship cameras. Which does its job very well, its a damn good camera. I saw the rolling shutter sample also on it but it's still there, better but still there.

It's funny how they made this camera for sports but Sony doesn't have any super zoom for thei e-mount yet, except for the newly announced 100-400. Just thought it was funny.

Lots of features strangely missing on the video end that are becoming standard on cameras less than half its cost. No picture profiles (no S-log), no flip out screen, no full-size hdmi, no 10 bit out, no 10 bit internal, according to Tony Northrup's initial impression: poor video AF. I know this is essentially a stills camera for sports but for a 4500 Sony hybrid camera the movie side of things seems intentionally kneecapped.

Well... This is a camera built for taking stills. Not terribly surprised considering the A7 was for stills too.

Though whenever they decide to make the A9s, it looks like they have a nice expansion on the side for SDI out and possibly other types of communication which would help a lot later on.

If they can gear the hardware to film and not focus on taking video and pictures at the same time we might see a camera doing 10-bit or even 12-bit... if they really want to push it. Cause 20 FPS at 14-bit for twelve seconds might change a lot depending on the codec or pass through.

Remember that the A7 was also more a hybrid stills camera than a video camera, where the A7s and A7s II was made with video in focus.

So I'm thinking, if this is what they offer for the A9, I'm pretty excited to see what the A9s will bring. If that means log and 10bit... I just might finally invest in a camera again, and this time not even look at Canon :) They really dropped the ball with the 5D4

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